Just last week, Leo started showing interest in the stairs for the first time. He'd crawl to the bottom of them and do some drumming on the first step, listening to the way his voice echoed a bit in the stairwell. One day he climbed up to the second step. We only discovered this after he fell down (which brought us running), and then repeated his new trick in front of us. The next day, he climbed all the way to the top. I was in the living room and I heard some excited, heavy breathing (which you can hear at the start of the video, below). And I thought, "oh! Leo's climbing the stairs!" I found him on the fifth step. I got my camera and captured the rest of his assent.
I should mention that our philosophy in regards to stairs and babies is that the safest thing to do is NOT to put up barriers keeping the two from each other, but rather to teach babies how to safely go up and down. We are going to be visiting in a lot of different homes and buildings over the next several months, and many of them won't have baby gates at the tops and/or bottoms of stairs. Teaching Leo how to climb stairs means that he will be safer wherever we go. Plus, a baby gate is just asking to be left open, giving parents a false sense of security if their baby doesn't know how to maneuver stairs safely.
We knew that Leo's interest in and ability to climb stairs would mean a period of increased parental attention, since we will have to spot Leo as he learns. Luckily, this time around, we also have Luke and Jaz, two very willing and capable spotters (since I'm not sure how many more hours of baby's pace stair climbing I have left in me). We do have some gates that can block of the stairs for those times when our chaos is super chaotic (school day mornings while we make lunches, for example), but for the most part our hope is that after several dozen supervised trips up and down the stairs, Leo will be able to make the trek on his own.
The best part of this movie--of the first time Leo climbed all the way to the top of the stairs--is the reception he receives from his brothers once he gets there:
My favorite quotes:
"Leo can easily climb up here! . . . Lukas come see!" (Zeben, so beside himself with excitement).
"You're so proud of yourself!" - Jaz and Zeben
"How 'bout we have a little party to congratulate Leo from learning how to climb up the stairs?" (Apparently Jaz has inherited the "any excuse for a party" gene).
"Leo, we gave you a prize for congratulating you and your crawling skills." (Watch carefully at this point, and you will notice that after Lukas presents Leo with the "prize," Jaz says, "no, don't!" and drops the baby in order to rescue the prize (a trio blocks building, which he brings back into the kids' bedroom). This makes Lena and me laugh so hard).
"Do it again Leo, do it again Leo, do it again!" (Is he a baby or is he a toy? I suppose he's a bit of both).
As the kids say at the end of the movie, we now have the great task of teaching Leo how to climb down. We usually do this with the help of a slide. We'll see if the same tricks that worked for the other babies work for our newest little climber. And I'm guessing we'll be going through quite a bit of arnica in the next few weeks while Leo hones his skills, in a two-steps-up-one-small-tumble-down kind of way.
2/6/10
Stairs are for Climbing
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5 comments:
We take the same approach to stairs, and have no big stair injuries to report, to date (note to self: knock on hardwood floor at the bottom of aforementioned stairs).
Watching the bigger boys cheer him on, celebrate with (for?) him, and dutifully lug him to-and-fro is just heartwarming. Moments like these excite an impulse in me to have another (and another and another) child, if only to multiply and prolong the joy of watching my children love and enjoy each other.
Our stair approach is the same. We just had our first major tumble this week - and Ben is 3 1/2 years old! He ended it with a spectacular full front handspring off the third step from the bottom and landed on his feet. Pretty amazing stuff!
We need to start teaching our two new crawlers about stairs. One is pretty good at going up stairs, but I'm not sure how to teach them to safely go down them. Any tips?
Speaking of arnica (and this is a bit of tangent here)...I just made your baked brown rice. Yum! And yes, easy enough for a three year old, except for the part (and here's where the arnica comes in) when you should warn people that though they are used to using pots on the stovetop and not in the oven, the handle of a pot when sitting in a 400 degree oven for an hour is HOT! and one (especially one who is a sleep-deprived mama trying to keep her toddler entertained while making said rice) should NOT try to grab the handle of the hot pot. But perhaps I'm the only one clumsy enough to do this.
Oh no, jojo! I'm so sorry that happened! I will go add a reminder to the original post. I hope your hand heals quickly.
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